IN THE MEDIA
A Sickening Display of Evil
Feb 25, 2025 | Justin Amler
The Advertiser/ Daily Telegraph – 25 February 2025
Our worst fears have been realised. The unbearable truth is confirmed: little Kfir and Ariel Bibas are dead, among the four bodies that were returned home to Israel, in a sick macabre carnival display in which Gazan civilians brought their children to watch the cavalcade of human suffering. The nightmare that began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists and their civilian accomplices stormed their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz, has ended in the most devastating way imaginable.
Except in a sickening twist, it wasn’t over after Israel forensically confirmed that the body that was supposed to be that of their mother Shiri Bibas was not her and was instead what the IDF called it “an anonymous, unidentified body.”
Hamas eventually did return the actual remains of Shiri Bibas, but it showed once again that despite how low and depraved Hamas is, it was still finding new and twisted ways to sink even lower. Just this past weekend, it forced hostages Guy Gilboa-Dalal and Evyatar David to watch the release of other hostages just metres away, before taking them back to their terror tunnel prison.
Confirmation of the deaths of the little Bibas brothers and their mother was not unexpected, yet still came like a gut-wrenching hammer blow to the hearts of both Israelis and Jews across the world. For so long, we clung to the hope that this was just another sadistic Hamas psychological mind game, designed to torment us, to hurt us, to cause unimaginable pain and suffering.
The incident with Shiri Bibas’s body proved we were right to think that. Yet hope remains the driving force that has kept the hostage families going – no matter how frail, how small, how unrealistic or improbable that hope has been.
The images of a desperate and terrified Shiri Bibas, surrounded by savages, clutching her two small children as she was being dragged into Gaza, ripped from their sanctuary into a living nightmare, will forever be seared into our collective consciousness, an unspeakable act of inhumanity that is simply beyond words.
This was not just a crime against innocent people, but a crime against decency and humanity itself.
Unsurprisingly, Hamas and their twisted apologists around the world still blame Israel for their deaths, saying Israeli airstrikes are what killed them. But this is a double lie, a twisted perversion of reality, of which Hamas have become such masters, on two separate levels.
Forensic evidence now shows the two brothers, along with their mother, were murdered by gunman, not in an airstrike.
But even if that were not true, Hamas has been responsible for every death, both Palestinian and Israeli, since October 7 and every day afterwards, no matter the context. If they had not decided to launch a genocidal war on the people of Israel then Shiri Bibas and her children would be alive today. So would every Israeli child and every Palestinian child and every Thai worker and every pensioner and every teenager dancing at a festival celebrating peace.
Everyone.
The ceasefire deal for the release of Israeli hostages held captive by Hamas was not a diplomatic negotiation. It was blackmail and ransom, no different than if someone was to hold a gun to your child’s head and threaten to pull the trigger unless you give in to their demands.
And yet some world leaders, including Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, hail this deal as a step toward some kind of lasting peace, still failing to grasp the magnitude of the enemies Israel faces— their sheer brutality and unwavering, maniacal goal of destroying a country and its people.
Hamas does not seek compromise – it seeks annihilation, and any leader who does not understand this fundamental truth is not just misguided but complicit in enabling further atrocities. Can they truly not see that any group capable of the sadistic events of October 7, is totally incapable of forging any kind of lasting peace?
However, beyond the politics and the diplomacy and the international statements, is a very human story. In Israel tonight, there is a man called Yarden Bibas who was held hostage for 484 days of hell. When he was kidnapped, he had a loving wife and two small children – flaming red hair, smiles that could melt your heart. Today, his family is gone.
And so, our hearts will break, as they should.
Our tears will flow, as they must.
The grief is immeasurable, and the trauma in our community is real and it’s raw.
Throughout our history, we have endured unimaginable tragedies, yet we continue to fight for our existence and our rights, standing tall and proud – even if, at times, it feels like we’re standing alone.
We will mourn Shiri, Kfir, Ariel and every other victim of the October 7 atrocities. As painful as this moment is, it will not weaken our resolve, but strengthen it to keep on fighting our enemies so that such atrocities can never be repeated.
